March 30, 2010

tl;dr

Brevity is often a necessity on the Internet. The meme “tl;dr,” which stands for “too long; didn’t read,” is a notable example of this. Used whenever someone writes a comment, story, blog post, message board post or anything else that loses the attention of the reader, tl;dr lets the author know that they have failed at least one person with their work.

Sometimes it is used simply for a humorous effect. Either way, tl;dr says a lot about how people process the information they gather on the Internet. While space is not ever at a premium on the Internet, that lack of limitations can lead to material that has a very low informational content. One of the reasons Twitter is so popular may easily be that people are forced to put a lot of information into only 140 characters.

A very related meme is “cool story bro,” which says the same thing to a post that is more personal, yet at the same time, still very boring.